DEAR FARMKETEERS & CONVIVIAL ‘CREEKNIKS: Have you met Sed here at the farmstand? Even when Sed is trapped in a torrent of donut-addled shoppers, Sed is nice and steady. Nice and “seddy,” as we say. Sed is very balanced. Can balance things atop the head for days.

That is Sed’s “Power 3” – a mastered skill that confers no obvious advantage. Sed explains that Power 1 is some awesome career skill you have, like predicting the stock market if you are a Wall Street oracle. Power 2 is something you crush at and it helps you in life; predicting the stock market would be a good Power 2, too. Power 3 is that extra magic you haven’t found a use for. Yet. Like balancing apples on your head. (Perhaps after the apocalypse your Power 3 will become your Power 1. When a career in apples will be more lucrative than trying to rig the defunct financial markets.)

Farmketeers, YOUR Power 1 is pumpkin picking. Pick your dream pumpkin and you will feel happy. Happy workers do better work so your career will take off. You did a fine job on the long holiday weekend. You picked more pumpkins than there are stars in the cloudy Ithaca sky. Only 4,592 more to pick. Attention families, student groups, office teams, and pumpkin collectors: the big u-pick sale continues. Pick any 5 for $25. Pick any 12 for $50. Any size.

Your Power 2 is donuts. Eating these deep-fried toroids of fructotic splendor will help you in life, not least because they will power you up to pick pumpkins. Thus you have a chain reaction of auspicious action. This week’s donut models excelled at munching donuts in the pumpkin field. Three weeks til Halloween and they are already properly pumpkinned. Donuts served Saturday and Sunday 10 AM to 6 PM.

Your Power 3 is picking exotic heritage apples. For the first time ever, we are opening the entire heirloom orchard to the rabble (that means you, Dear Farmketeers) for u-picking! Professional orchardists around the nation will scoff, “Fools! You can’t let Joe-Bag-a-Donuts into the inner shrine of pomological sanctitude! Only geniuses can handle these most potent specimens!” To which we shout, “HUMBUG!” Let our heirloom apple rows henceforth be called The People’s Orchard. Or The Pupils’ Orchard. How’s that? We are all humble students of the apple game.

Yummmm. Yes, starting today, you can pick the lower rows of the Dwarf Orchard. Ask at the stand when you get here. You will find yourself amongst the likes of Calville Blanc, Ashmeads Kernel, Baldwin, King David, Wickson Crab, Black Oxford, Roxbury Russet, Golden Russet, Suntan, Newtown Pippin, Spitzenburg, Hudson Gem, and many more besides. Please don’t bite them and throw them on the ground. They are different. They are spicy. They are scintillating. They are pomes of the highest order, many reaching back hundreds of years before Honeycrisp (the apple equivalent of a deep-fried donut) was a glint in a postmodern apple breeder’s eye.

Please have a great time expanding your apple-tude. In our spare time from ‘Creeking, we supply baby fruit trees to orchardists in all 50 states. Many people come to our nursery to get these very heirloom apple varieties that you can now explore for yourself! They are prized for making craft cider and generally rebuilding our shared national apple heritage, which got depleted through 20th Century industrial monoculture. Remember, even though our signs might say, DO NOT PICK, please pick. We will know that you have carefully read this Fresh Crop Alert if you disobey those signs as instructed herein.

Other apples now open for u-pick: Jonagold, Macoun (pictured), Fortune, Spigold, Late Gala, and good old Cortland and Mac. Ask at the stand and we will circle the spots on the map. Help us clear out each variety one by one. It is a beautiful crop this year and we don’t want any apples to drop.

Another Power 1: pick your own Brussels Sprouts. Farmer Steve thanks you all for being such a polite and well-behaved crowd over the holiday weekend. In particular, you honored the Treaty of Brussels: (1) Find loppers at the Produce Portal which is a crystal-handled rickety door in the deer fence, (2) Find a deleafed stalk, meaning a stalk that had the leaves pre-stripped by a professional farmer, (3) Lop the whole stalk, (4) Return loppers to Produce Portal. DO NOT pick individual sprouts. Meaning do not pluck the l’il cabbages off the stalks. Take a whole stalk home then pluck the sprouts off right into your cookery. Then add bacon or facon.

“Cruciferous and delicerous.” You heard it here first.

TIME TO PLANT! Seed garlic sale 10/20 & 10/21. Our neighbor Paul will be selling his organically grown garlic bulbs at the farm stand Saturday and Sunday, October 20 & 21. He has grown these lines of garlic for about 10 years at his homestead on Indian Creek Road. Paul has Georgia Fire, Italian Easy Peel, Tochliavri, Persian Star, Romanian Red, Chesnok Red, Georgia Crystal, and other varieties. Soft necks and hard necks. Large bulbs and cold-hardy. Come support a local gardener and get your own garlic patch planted!

Chef Greg down in NYC is roasting his FLX haul. Making all kinds of pepper and eggplant stuff including avjar.

What is Bowie trying totell us? Last chance to cut your own flowers. There are lots of flowers now but when they go, they go fast. Cooler nights ahead. Bring some color home. Cut your own bouquet for only $5. What is a bouquet? A fistful of flowers. Don’t be THAT guy and try to fit a bucket of stems in your fist. A bouquet is more than Bowie has in his mouth but less than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar could hold in his hand. Just a bouquet-sized bouquet.

(Commercial break for donuts.)

If you ever get tired of our schtick and want to grow your own orchard, we’ll sell you a tree. You can see some potted trees at the farm stand now, or order online from our sister biz, Cummins Nursery. The live inventory is here. NOW is the time to reserve your trees for spring planting. As the fall harvest season draws to a close, big orchardists around the country swoop in and buy hundreds or thousands of trees. So now is your chance to get a couple you might like before our best inventory is cleared out. We sell out every year.

Photo 16, row 15, bunny 14 (pounds). This plump fellow lives at Five Pads Farm round the corner. They supply us with garlic, pear juice, and honey. We also have Gil’s Honey, from a small family-owned apiary in Ithaca. You can support these local growers by shopping here at Indian Creek. Does anyone else think bunnies are kind of scary/evil? Just a thought. Didn’t mean to say it out loud.